Social Media Engagement Applications allows different kinds of users to exchange data which can be in the form of text, image, video, audio etc. via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn etc. Because of variety of features and advantages offered by these media services, their user base have grown exponentially and is still growing.

A lot of established companies have their business model based on social media applications such as Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn etc., while there are other companies who are attracting huge traffic from these social media applications which ultimately reflects as sales conversion.

With the advent of smartphone and its increasing penetration among the users, mobile applications now contributes major chunk of the revenue for social media companies. Even government organizations are actively participating in social media platforms either to advertise about their works, or to provide information about a particular topic to users or for opinion polls. Increasing penetration among social media users have enabled many advertisement agencies, PR firms, mobile apps and service provider companies whose business model is based on social media engagement applications and this trend is expected to continue.

Social Media Engagement Applications Market Segmentation

On the basis of platforms:

Social Networks-applications which allow users to connect with each other via a profile or group of profiles. Most common social networking sites are Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

Media Sharing- media sharing platforms allows users to upload and exchange different sorts of media such as video, pictures etc. YouTube, Instagram are the most common platforms for media sharing.

Microblogging– microblogging platforms allows users to exchange content in the form of comments, images, video links etc. Twitter is a famous microblogging platform.

Blog Forums – blog forums allows users to exchange ideas with each other in the form of blogs and posts. WordPress is one such famous blogging platform and there are several others.

Social New – websites and their mobile apps publishing news articles or information comes under this category. Some of the famous social news platform are Digg, Reddit, etc.

Others – lots of other social media platforms have come in the market such as location based services, social bookmarking, aggregators, collaboration tools, broadcasting tools etc.

There are other sub segments of social media engagement applications market. Some of them are:

Sub segment on the basis of device usage:

Desktop – users accessing social media applications from desktops

Smartphone Web – smartphoneusers accessing social media from websites but not mobile applications

Smartphone App – smartphoneusers accessing social media from mobile applications but not website

Tablet Web – tabletusers accessing social media from websites but not mobile applications

Tablet App – tabletusers accessing social media from mobile applications but not websites

Sub segment on the basis of users:

Individual – individual users using social media for personal usage

Corporates – corporate entities using social media for advertisement, ad sales or other purposes

Government Agencies – government agencies using social media platforms for advertisement or to provide public domain information

Other – lots of other users such as NGO’s, communities, organizations etc.

Regional usage of social media platform depends highly on regions population and accessibility of the internet and smartphone devices, which is why largest percentage of users are located in APAC regions followed by European, American and other regions. With increasing accessibility of the technology and supporting devices to poorer nations, distribution of usage of social media platforms will solely rely upon population of regions.

Increasing internet usage, smartphone penetration will be the major drivers for global social media engagement application market. Other drivers which will contribute in market growth are increasing awareness among non-users, decreasing cost of broadband and data tariffs, increasing benefits offered through applications etc.

Difficult to use GUI’s, social and economic factors, accessibility issues will restrain the growth of social media engagement application market. Government regulation also restrict social media usage for example China has blocked social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. and thus deprive a huge chunk of world’s population away from the benefits of social media.

Major social media engagements applications are Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram etc. Business model may differ from company to company but the underlying structure of these companies is based upon usage of social media engagement applications traffic.